


It's a Losing Battle - No Need to Feel Ashamed

by kyanve



Series: Truce [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, POV Shiro (Voltron), PTSD, and getting his bearings early-series, mention of Shiro's time in the arena, mostly Shiro getting fussed at, non-graphic/detailed mention of genocide/atrocities, shiro worries about everyone else more than himself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 04:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12005427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyanve/pseuds/kyanve
Summary: While the Castle's getting its final repairs to leave, Shiro spends some time in the Arusian village helping rebuild, and finds out one of the Arusian elders has been around long enough to know better than to believe his assertions that he's "fine" - and that the Black Lion is stubborn, opinionated, and also not falling for it.(Occurs around chapter 3 of Truce.)





	It's a Losing Battle - No Need to Feel Ashamed

All of it felt unreal. 

Keith was getting borrowed again to help with gathering firewood, pulled away from where they’d been sitting; the Arusian elder had an uncanny ability to appear in Shiro’s line of sight with a disapproving, firm glare whenever he so much as thought about trying to do the same. Shiro had tried to argue earlier, and after a back and forth trying to convince the Elder he wasn’t _that_ badly hurt, just thrown around a bit, but that got harder to do when the Elder started poking various bruises, scrapes, and signs of minor injury every time he protested.

“I may not know much of anything about your people, but I know enough to know better” had been repeated a few times in that.

The sun was setting, with only a few puffy clouds in the sky and a light breeze; it was comfortably warm. The village was a mess, but they were rebuilding, and at the rate it was going, within a few weeks the only sign Sendak’s drones had ever been there would be the husks staked up like trophies around the square and the gouges that’d been torn out of the ground by Voltron’s wings when they’d narrowly avoided damaging the village. It already didn’t look or sound like everyone had been in fear for their lives not long ago.

He was outside, healing but intact, Keith had been actually spending time with _people_ telling stories and talking more than he’d ever been prone to around humans, and it was actually peaceful again, peaceful in a way that’d been a distant fever dream for the last year. 

Sometimes he still half expected it all to dissolve and turn out to be one of Haggar’s illusions. He wasn’t sure that would ever go away, either.

The Elder’d compromised on his insistence on helping by setting him to helping mix the clay-based plaster they were using to repair their homes; it was enough to feel like he was doing something, but monotonous enough to not really work as a distraction after a while. 

He didn’t notice the Arusian elder had returned until the little alien cleared his throat; after the initial startle, he was quietly thankful the elder had read earlier moments well enough to get his attention without physically poking him. 

“You remember more than you’re admitting to them, don’t you.” 

He froze, then put his attention more on the vat and keeping the mixture from getting too still. 

The elder sighed with a headshake. “You can say or not say whatever you want, but I am not going to say anything to any of the others, and if you are leaving as soon as your ship is repaired, then I will not be able to prod you later or have any effect whatsoever after this.” 

Shiro went quiet, trying to focus on the movement of tending the clay-plaster for a few minutes. “You really didn’t see much of what they’re capable of.” 

The elder tilted his head. “No. We know little of your enemy. But, we have enemies of our own; our history is not without cruelties.” 

He gave a wry chuckle. “I wonder if anyone’s is.” 

“Probably not.” The elder was oddly nonchalant about it. “I know the situation is more complicated than the younger ones make it sound, Lion Warrior, and that aside from the Lion Gods, the differences between your people and ours - and theirs - are in tools, beliefs, and choices, not divinity and mortality.” 

“I’m…not sure I’d call them gods.” Maybe part of it was distracting himself from the conversation the Arusian elder was trying to have, but it was an easy thing to trip over; even if the Black Lion was undeniably alive, with a mind of its own, it was hard not to be aware that it was also a thing of metal and machinery, made by Allura’s father. “Someone made them - a person like the rest of us.” 

The elder hummed thoughtfully; he realized after a few seconds that the alien had been watching him stare at the lion. “We know. Your castle is part of how our village was founded, you know.” 

“Eh?” The entire pseudo-religious significance was still awkward, even if the Elder had adjusted to a more grounded concept of it than others in the village.

“A long time ago, when we were still wandering, entering this valley was a taboo; there were whispered stories of gods and demons, giant figures that were seen killing great predators with light alone. One of our ancestors had been separated from his people, and was fleeing from a rival group; he was desperate, and knew they would not chase into the sacred valley.” 

Other Altaeans, most likely, or other crewmembers of the Castle that hadn’t gone into cryosleep, passed down in stories with the best understanding of energy weapons the early Arusians had. 

“Wounded and with nothing left to lose, he walked to the great bridge of the fortress, praying to the gods to take pity on him - and they did; he awakened later within the fortress, with his wounds tended and healed as though they had never even occurred. He stayed with them for a while, and asked their permission to bring his people into the valley, where they would be safe and have an abundance of food and good land to live on, which they granted.” 

And they were probably utterly flabbergasted to be interpreted as gods by the locals.

“They had told him their stories, and through him, they were passed down; how they had lived among the heavens, spread among the stars. They told him of their great king, who had forged alliances with others who had mastered the heavens, and how their king had found great spirits sealed into a stone; he forged great bodies for them, setting them free from their imprisonment, and in return, the Lion Gods shared their power with the king and his comrades.” The elder nudged Shiro’s knee with his staff, and then pointed with it up, to the Black and Red Lions looming just outside the village.

“The Lion Gods brought peace to the heavens until a great betrayal caused the peoples of the heavens to turn on one another; their king had taken the power given to him by the Lion Gods and given it to his daughter before he was slain, and the Lion Gods fell into a deep sleep. When the time came, she would awaken as the Lion Goddess, and call the Lion Gods to pass judgment and cleanse the worlds and heavens of the evil that had consumed them.” 

From what he understood, it hadn’t even been distorted that much over the ages; the keepers of their traditions, at least, had maintained it pretty well, even if it had been warped a little by thousands of years and a lack of good frame of reference for starships and artificial intelligences. The lions and Voltron were already capable of power on a scale Shiro had barely thought of being possible for something their size, and he’d gotten a strong sense from the Black Lion that they’d barely scratched the surface of what they could do, most of their power still dormant. 

Alfor had made something beyond human comprehension, but gods felt a little far-fetched.

He had the strange feeling the Black Lion was laughing at him, some kind of private joke. 

“So us gathering the lions here was pretty much playing into your stories of an end times scenario. Our people have some stories like that - how there’s going to come a time when the gods destroy everything to make something better out of it.” 

The elder nodded soberly. “We were relieved to hear that we had not displeased the Li-….The ‘princess’ or the Lion Gods.” 

“Our fight is with the Galra - to stop them from hurting more people like you.” It was a known thing now between them all, but it still felt worth repeating, especially to reinforce the idea in any new stories passed down. “What happened to them? The people that used to live in the castle.”

“We knew them as the servants of the gods; they had always been few, and those that our ancestor met claimed to have been born on Arus, the children’s children of their king’s original servants. Various things happened, and they vanished and died out long ago.” 

Some small surviving population of the Castle’s old crew that’d managed to eke out a living for a few generations, at least, long enough to leave an impression on the locals, still long gone. “Has anyone mentioned them to Allura?” 

She had been talking to the Arusians during the party, after all.

The elder nodded. “I did. It was not lingered on long; she thanked us for telling her of what had happened to her people and withdrew again for a while.” 

She’d awakened expecting something to be wrong even while she was disoriented and getting bearings; things had to’ve already been pretty bad when her father put her into the cryopod, and now she was dealing with waking up to a universe where her father, her home, and her people that had been there when she’d fallen asleep were all distant memories and legends. “She’s… still pretty young. It’s a lot to lose, and she’s trying to carry everything on top of it.” 

“Fight when the enemy is at the door, mourn when they’ve been driven back.” The elder propped his staff against the small bench, folding his hands over the top of it and resting his chin on it. “She’s not the only one trying to carry everything, is she.” 

Shiro scrunched his face, looking down at the elder. “I’m fine, really.”

The elder looked up at him, sat back up a little more, and poked the end of his staff into Shiro’s ribs, where there was a scorched spot on the fabric and a massive bruise underneath along with a burn from Sendak’s attempts at baiting Pidge; he got a wince, discomfort at the topic over the pain. 

“Look, Sendak threw me around, alright? It’ll heal, it’s not that bad.” 

“And how old are all of your other scars, hmm?” Another poke with less pressure, easier to ignore. “Everything you don’t want to talk about and keep changing the subject on about them? You were afraid when you said we wouldn’t understand, you try to hide it but I am more than old enough to know what that sounds like.”

So the Elder had caught on that he was dodging. “You just said it yourself, didn’t you? Fight when the enemy is at your door. As soon as the Castle’s repaired, we’re leaving to lead them away from you - and they’re not going to stop coming after us, not when we have the one thing that can threaten them anymore.”

“Mourning the dead and tending the injuries of the living so that you are not overwhelmed are two different things.” The Elder leaned up and in, eyes narrowed. “Your people _do_ have rites for tending the spirit? Since you obviously are not past the need for it.” 

He leaned back, away from the tiny alien, glaring back in frustration. “My people are all the way on the other side of the universe and not a lot more prepared to fight the Galra than _yours_ , I am _not_ leading the Empire back there for - things I don’t even think some therapist would know what to do with while everybody’s in danger!” 

The elder continued to stare up at him.

“Oh come on, what do you want me to do?!”

Still staring. “Even the greatest kings seek guidance, you know.”

He could feel another, much larger set of eyes on him, and he looked away from the elder trying to figure out where it was coming from - 

And found himself looking up at the Black Lion.

“Oh come on, not you too?!”

The elder hadn’t looked away either. “You should listen to the Lion God, you know.” 

“It’s - not a god, it’s - a really big overpowered self-aware machine with a bad sense of humor!”

The lion wasn’t going to let him hear the end of this. He could feel it.

“It is a great, immortal being powerful enough to change the course of history that is sharing power with you.” The Elder gave him a flat look. “It’s also older than you and likely _much_ wiser.” 

Different definitions of fate, different definitions of gods, and he returned the flat, unimpressed look at that last bit of shade thrown in.

He looked away, staring off into the forest outside the village. “…I’ll talk to the lion, alright?” 

The elder considered, and finally nodded. “It’s a good start.” 

Before anything else could be said, a couple of the other Arusians came running in from outside the village, drawing the King’s attention and getting him hurrying to the center of the square where they were sitting. 

They were talking over each other, but Shiro heard enough to catch something about traps and game snares out the north of the village being damaged by some kind of intrusion that wasn’t a beast; they were pointing the direction that was apparently north - 

The direction Keith and Klaixap had headed.

Shiro was moving with a handful Arusians scrambling to catch up right behind him, racing into the forest to try to find the two of them. The Battlecruiser had been huge, there could have been other survivors they hadn’t accounted for, Keith might be able to handle himself if he weren’t caught off guard too badly but Klaixap would be an easy target and if they tried to aim for him, they’d have leverage on Keith -

There were voices and it sounded angry but no Galra -

He caught sight of Keith’s red armor first, holding something at arm’s length with no sign of his bayard, then got close enough to have less foliage in the way.

Keith was holding an Arusian, dressed differently from the familiar villagers and with a more blueish skin tone; the Arusian was trying to stab his wrist, the bone dagger doing more damage to itself than Keith’s gauntlet and vambrace. Keith was unimpressed. Klaixap had another one pinned to the ground at swordpoint, and was in a staredown with a third.

The Elder had said they had their own wars and conflicts.

He realized he’d activated the weapons system on the arm at some point during the dash to get out there' he wasn’t sure if it was helping or just felt like an over-reaction now. It did seem to have gotten the attention of the three they were having a scuffle with.

If it had just been Klaixap, it would have been bloody, but Keith’s presence had downgraded it to almost a joke.

Keith still looked relieved as the more familiar Arusians spread around the clearing, before he held up the one he’d caught to eye level; he was already lapsing a little into bristling. “Okay, let’s try this again. What are you _doing_?”

The foreign Arusian was completely undeterred, jabbing with the bone blade at Keith’s face even though it fell well short of making contact. “We come from Daixni village! We come to investigate the village of the Lion-worshippers, whose rituals have called down angry gods!” 

Shiro groaned; they’d just mostly convinced the one village, and now there was some other rival village that was taking that same logic-leap. “We’re not _gods_.” 

He had their attention. Their incredibly dubious attention. There was a glance at his still-glowing hand. 

Better than where he was last week. Worlds better than where he was last week. He survived that, he could handle anything. Even tiny barely-figured-out-agriculture aliens deciding he was a god and still somehow not being deterred from picking fights. “We’re people, like you. We’re from another world. The lions _are_ ours, but they’re not gods either.” 

At least the narrowed eyes that drew seemed more gauging than liable to attempt another attack. The downside was that they looked even less like they believed him. 

Klaixap took his attention off the one he had pinned enough to look up and chime in angrily. “Warriors of Daixni raid our village often, stealing our stores and our livestock!” 

It filled in some things, left others blank, and was not entirely helpful, since it would probably just be agitating the already unhappy intruders - 

And sure enough, the one Keith was holding was making another attempt to swipe ineffectually towards Keith’s face, mixed with accusatory jabs. “We are scouts, here to learn why _you_ attack us with metal from the heavens!” 

It was hard to tell if the accusations were aimed at them, at the local Arusians, or if they were being lumped in with the local Arusians - which they basically were right now. He did have a pang of guilt, and it was hard not to worry about what damage might’ve been done elsewhere; the way Voltron covered ground, there could’ve been several villages they’d put at risk with their practice. 

Klaixap completely stopped caring about the one aiming a spear at him, more intent on arguing with the one Keith was holding. “We did no such thing! The metal from the heavens was the work of foul invaders, the ancient enemies of the Lion Gods, driven off by the Lion Warriors!” 

Shiro wanted to wince; anybody looking up would’ve seen Voltron trying to treat bits of fallen, inert metal like a soccer ball. 

(It was exactly what Lance had been trying to do, too, even if there had been times he was over enthusiastic and the others weren’t entirely on board with it or picking up on the muscle memory and movement well enough to follow through properly.)

It didn’t work to distract the other-village scouts, either, and it quickly descended into bickering, the Arusians all talking over each other. The only small blessing was that it did seem like the Paladins’ presence was enough to keep it from tipping over into actual violence. 

He buried his face in his good hand; the prosthetic was still half active enough to hurt, and seemed to have its own override against accidental self-injury.

They were supposed to be diplomats, but there wasn’t really anything in Shiro’s base of experience for how to get a bunch of agitated aliens with some kind of old grudge and a religious difference to stop arguing when you’d just barely gotten one side convinced you weren’t gods and the other still believed you were, just hostile to them.

A roar cut through the noise. What was said didn’t register as important - it was a little thin sounding and the pitch was all wrong, but that didn’t change a good year of _angry Galra means very very bad_ , a tone that went with executions and beatings, screams and panicked begging and blood in the cells and occasionally someone giving up and trying to fight knowing it’d mean death or worse. 

He was dimly aware of Keith’s voice, suddenly incongruous, something from a past made of tattered patchwork quilt remains and full of holes that didn’t belong in reality anymore.

Something tugged at his leg, then tugged again more insistently; he looked down, and his first reflex on seeing the tiny alien was that he should be between them and whatever was going on. 

There was a quiet, uncertain “Lion Warrior?” from the Arusian, and it was an interrupt, something to grasp at for an anchor on his surroundings.

He wasn’t on a dimly lit ship or station, he was under an open sky with a gentle breeze, surrounded by green leaves; he had armor that was white and black, and was far away from the cells. 

And Keith was still carrying the unfriendly Arusian. The clearing had fallen quiet, and Keith was staring at him, worried enough to not really be paying attention to the alien he was carrying.

He tried to will the arm to dial back the threat mode. “I. Yes. Look, let’s find someplace that isn’t the middle of the woods -”

Something lit the sky not far away, and his effort to calm the prosthetic out of alert mode vanished; recognizing the shape a couple beats later as the Yellow Lion didn’t help as much as he’d hoped, his nerves still a messy, squirming snarl.

“Let’s go to the lions and sort this out.” His voice sounded already more calm and collected, and he wasn’t entirely sure how he accomplished it. 

He focused on Klaixap and the one he was in a staredown with. “No killing anyone on _either_ side.” 

He took the strange procession back to work on gathering his nerves and trying to focus on where he was; on Arus, and relatively safe.

******************************

He’d begged out of the bridge claiming sleep. He wasn’t sure that was going to happen, even if he was going to try to make an attempt initially.

The Black Lion’s attention was noticeably still on him, and it hadn’t forgotten what he’d said to the Arusian elder.

“Alright, fine,” he grumbled, heading out via the hangar elevator instead of the door to the hallways; everybody else was apparently too flat to notice. It bent down, jaws open as soon as he walked into the hangar.

There wasn’t a single sci-fi author he remembered who’d come up with a scenario where an AI this opinionated had this much power and it went well; he’d wonder about how much thought Allura’s father had put into this whole thing, but he at least seemed to’ve gotten the actual idea of Frankenstein - the lions didn’t seem unhappy with their position or existence at all, really.

There was a strange moment as he walked into the lion’s mouth where its presence grew much louder, and there was something that wasn’t really a correction; some kind of deep, old wounded sorrow and bittersweet appreciation for how little Shiro knew and how much he wasn’t carrying because of it.

The way they’d been hidden and the fact that Shiro and the others were there at all meant that their predecessors were gone, along with the entire civilizations and era that they’d come from. 

“I guess you guys are more like the old fantasy trope of the psychically bonded magic creature partner, huh.” He patted the wall as he walked into the cockpit; the lion purred, agreeing with the concept. 

It shouldn’t come so easily. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten so comfortable with having the lion lurking in his head so quickly, when he’d been through months of Hagar and the Druids trying to take apart his mind and rearrange the pieces. 

When he’d woken up in the desert, finally free, one of the things that had stood at as a relief almost too good to be true was that there would never be something else in his head again. 

Settling into the pilot’s seat was like settling back against some kind of living, warm bulk; it was hard to miss how _huge_ of a being the lion was, but it was still, watchful, careful. Where the druids had forced and torn their way through, it just curled around, handling him with the same kind of delicacy as a 20’ crocodile that could crush heavy bone without effort carrying hatchlings barely a few inches long. 

It had been watching the entire time earlier, in the forest, pulled back carefully and holding still around him until he had pulled himself back into a place where a careful brush against him wouldn’t be more likely to trip memories of the Druids instead. 

It probably didn’t hurt either that the Druid’s power had felt like something stifling and clinging; the lion was more like stepping outside a ship in space, if the endless stars held a strange sort of warmth and really _were_ a sea where someone could just drift with the currents and still make it back to shore. It didn’t reach in, it simply Was, a piece of the universe embodied, the jokes made about ‘stare too long into the abyss and it looks back into you’ where the abyss offered solace and understanding instead of judgment or temptation. 

And a growing sense of being stared at in smug amusement, the Abyss apparently also some kind of older relative that nothing got past.

“Alright, fine. I get it. I’m not sure how this whole thing is even supposed to work, though.” If the lion could see in his head, it wasn’t like he’d need to explain much to it. 

It nudged at him; it couldn’t help him sort his head without him putting in some effort himself.

“You know I’m not even sure where to start on that, right? Even if my memory weren’t Swiss cheese right now, you’re asking for a lot.” 

The lion had all the time in the universe for him to find somewhere to start.

And was perfectly capable of not letting him out until he did. 

“… and I thought Keith could be stubborn.” 

It had waited ten thousand years to get here.

He still wasn’t sure what it wanted, but he wasn’t about to test it on ‘not letting him out’ if he didn’t keep the agreement he hadn’t expected it to pin him on _that_ fast. “Well, I just spent a year in about the closest to Hell you can probably get without dying, survived, got out somehow, and spent a grand total of one day back on my planet before I got kidnapped into space again by a giant mechanical alien lion. That’s a start, right?” 

The lion did understand sarcasm and sass.

They weren’t going to work to get him out of this one.

He blew out a frustrated breath, sliding back in the pilot’s seat with an arm draped over the side. “You know if it were possible I’d happily forget all of it ever happened, right? Just shove it under a rock and let it go, in the past, where it belongs.” 

He knew it wouldn’t work, and the lion had no intention of letting him pretend it would. Even if he weren’t still involved in the war, it wouldn’t go away so easily; Black had been careful about minding crowding his awareness with ‘something foreign in his head’ while his nerves were more on edge and he wasn’t paying attention to expect it, but that didn’t mean the lion hadn’t been paying attention, and it was very pointedly tugging his attention back to how little it took to get him looking over his shoulder expecting an ambush when he was in the middle of a peaceful village under bright, clear skies. 

It wouldn’t stay under the rock, and he wasn’t forgetting it, just pretending to be fine while he was bleeding all over the floor. 

“You’re the one who agreed I should be in charge when you could see in my head.” 

If it was possible for the lion to physically roll its eyes, he was sure it would have, and there was a near-audible frustrated rumble; the presence around him was shifting, and it was suddenly hard to ignore just how much _bigger_ it was than anything he really had a concept of that way - a mass of power and starfields spun into a living thing where what he could sense of it felt like glimpsing the top bits of some sea-beast struggling to break the ocean’s surface. It never lost the strange sense of delicacy where it was in contact with him, something massive and powerful carefully minding its strength around something tiny and comparatively fragile, but it was _huge_ in a way that felt like it could’ve erased him from existence if it were careless.

It didn’t work that way - there was an absolute certainty that it couldn’t simply turn on someone it had accepted and allowed in; some echo of Allura’s explanation about the essence being mirrored that meant something else he couldn’t follow and tied back to something else that wasn’t translating properly in any way he could follow. 

More than that, it was being held out of reach; not because it was something the Lion thought should be hidden exactly, but it definitely left him aware that it was minding his limits whether he knew them or not. 

And even if he did have limits, the lion thoroughly agreed with everyone else that he thought far too little of his own abilities and accomplishments. It would not have accepted him if it did not think he was capable - that he’d proven himself more than well enough with what he’d survived and kept going through. 

“But you’re willing to lock me in here if I try to shove things under a rock.”

Accepting him did not mean sitting silent while he was being self-destructive, and trying to get him to acknowledge what he _had_ managed did not mean the lion was going to ignore him being an idiot.

Or that being capable and being an idiot were mutually exclusive. The lion seemed _very_ certain on that, and there was a story he wasn’t getting that it was still holding out of his reach. 

He folded his arms, leaning back in the pilot’s seat. “Okay, fine. It happened. It’s over. Isn’t this usually the part where I’m supposed to be trying to move on?”

It was waiting for something else; pushing at him for what his idea of ‘moving on’ was. 

Shiro rolled his eyes. “Trying to get on with life? I kind of have a lot to deal with right now. You know, getting abducted by aliens twice in a row, intergalactic war, giant hypertech lion ships talking in my head…”

The lion still wasn’t taking sarcasm as an answer and did, in fact, still know what sass was.

“Look, I’m not going to walk away from this, but it’s been at least a year I think since I really had a say in what I was doing with my life. Don’t get me wrong, this is worlds better than the Galra holding me prisoner, but I’m still trying to figure out which way is up and what I’m doing with myself anymore.” 

The starfield presence settled around him, quieter and less exasperated. There was another faint, barely audible rumble through the cockpit; it was listening.

“You realize I wasn’t in a command position before, right? I might have done a lot of mentoring with the younger cadets, but if the Galra hadn’t shown up, it would’ve been years before I was a team lead… and that was for exploration missions - taking ships out through our solar system collecting samples and taking a look around to help figure out what we might be able to do in the future. I was a _scientist_ , not a soldier.” 

He paused, distracted briefly - he’d caught the lion purring before, but quiet mental rumbling was different from sitting in a quiet hangar with the vibrations going through the entire cockpit in a strange attempt at reassurance. 

“I don’t think I’d even been in a fight before - I’m not sure how I survived the arenas.” He’d known fully before, but right now, his memory was hazy shadows and fragments - desperate necessity to keep Matt out of the way here, Keith nagging at him about his scores in self-defense class there, Keith trying to talk him through the basics of swordsmanship for want of a sparring partner. “I can’t say I’d be the least qualified person for this without all of that, because the others weren’t trained for this either, but I’m definitely not a warrior.” 

The lion was still purring, presence curled around him thoughtfully; it saw no actual problem with him not having the background for combat-focused work - there was some vague sense that ‘mostly not military’ had been true before of the Paladins. 

They would be fighting far more than their predecessors had started out doing, but the lion had watched what he’d been doing on Arus - trying to help with the rebuilding and helping Allura with opening talks between the villages - and approved. 

It was becoming more clear that whatever the Black Lion was keeping out of his reach mostly did have to do with their predecessors, a sense of nostalgia for days when there had been using their strength and resilience for relief work in dangerous places and their reputation for peace talks as often as combat filtering through; the connection wasn’t clear enough for much beyond that to make sense, a jumble of an entire span of time jammed and overlaid in the lion’s memory all at once. That alone would’ve worked to keep him out of it even without the lion putting a mental paw on his head to hold him out of reach of it; he wasn’t sure he could’ve understood it if the lion did decide to share. 

“I’m not the only one carrying around baggage here, am I.” His earlier irritation softened.

The lion’s attention refocused more clearly on him, bemused and a little imperious - it knew what it was doing with its problems, and was not going to let him shove his out of the way for that. There had been a point to that, and it was giving him time to acknowledge it before it returned to dragging him around by the proverbial scruff.

“You’re saying that randomly hijacking a bunch of people training for exploration programs with no voluntary combat experience is a bonus.”

‘Random’ earned a sense of mock offense, and when he prodded back at it for that, whatever it tried to put across was an even worse snarl of multilayered nonsense that made his head hurt and left it even more smug that it - _they_ \- had a clue what they were doing.

There would be more needed than just fighting; if they had wanted soldiers that would focus solely on that, they would have sought out soldiers. 

“So you hijacked basically a bunch of kids who mostly hadn’t finished training yet.”

Another set of multilayered gibberish, like someone had taken calculus, sheet music, and a bunch of raw programming code and ran it through multiple languages of an old, clunky translation bot, then tried to display or play it all at once. He grimaced, cringing in the seat and trying to wave a mental white flag at it rather than even trying to follow it; down that hole were migraines. 

“You know we really need to work on your habit of ‘I know what I’m doing because I say so’ whenever I have a question, because I’ve had more than enough of not being told anything.” He set his jaw, hunching his shoulders and narrowing his eyes at the console as the most convenient thing to stare at when he was sitting inside the thing he was arguing with and mostly aware of it as some kind of psychic nonsense presence. 

The lion actually backed off with a strangely loud sense of apologetic guilt, then some kind of sketchy, less messy gibberish that was still multilayered calculus rendered in wingdings font, and a very pointed angle of attention at his moment of frustrated confusion.

Its explanation wouldn’t translate to something he could process ~~yet~~.

“This is that whole ‘bonding with the lion’ thing, isn’t it.” 

He wasn’t wholly right, but more of it would make sense as that grew stronger, and the correction wouldn’t translate either.

At this point the debate over what the lions were was feeling increasingly immaterial; Black was undeniably stubborn, self-aware, and possessed of a personality and Opinions, and apparently baggage of its own, even if it was watching him and ready to hang some kind of implied threat if he _tried_ to treat its problems as something he should be trying to fix.

It was quite certain that him being where he was and continuing on as a Paladin would solve a chunk of its problems anyway.

“You’re sending mixed signals there, if you want us to prioritize trying to keep peace where we can and rebuild but are out for revenge yourself.” Just because it was a giant godbeast that was in his head didn’t mean he wasn’t going to chide it the way he would any of the others. 

The response was almost unreadable, a strange, gauging pensive where the sheer age and scale of the creature was noticeable again. Revenge had nothing to do with it, and he had no idea what it was trying to resolve.

“You could always try explaining it.” The way Coran had talked about their predecessors and what he seemed to expect from them, he was getting the suspicion the lion was not used to dealing with someone that COULDN’T just follow on from whatever it was thinking or planning easily. 

There was a weight of tragedy the lion wasn’t willing to explain - not because it wasn’t sure it could get the general idea across to him, but because he _did_ have enough to sort through on his own, and its problems would complicate that enough to make the tangle he was already fighting to make sense of far, far worse. It wasn’t against sharing, but it wasn’t going to throw that in while he was still finding his footing.

He wanted to argue, but that was exactly what he’d just been acknowledging was actually a problem, and he hated that it was right here. 

It hadn’t forgotten his moment of freezing out in the woods, either.

“I don’t freeze,” he argued, indignant.

And suddenly had the feeling of something very large looking down at him and through him challenging him to repeat that and mean it.

It was another of the things he hated having happen where he had no intention of discussing it with anybody other than the lion at this point, even if he knew better than to argue with it when it was mentally staring at him like that.

“Alright, so I froze. Probably have a few more screws loose than I’d thought, too; for a second there when Keith got angry I could’ve sworn he sounded almost like a Galra.”

He had never wondered what stifled laughter sounded like coming from an entity that couldn’t laugh out loud, but apparently now he had a clue, and he wasn’t sure what was so funny.

There were, suddenly, a handful of screens accessing the Castle’s computer. The Altaean text was completely beyond him, but after a few seconds of flickering, the lion had brought up five screens that he managed to parse as the biometric data from their armor.

The lion was pointing at something in Altaean script on Keith’s, trying to translate it into concepts he could follow; about all that it managed in the clumsy mush of ideas and impression was that there was something dramatically different on Keith’s and it had to do with not being entirely human.

And it trying to tug loose threads in his own memory.

Keith, sick and miserable from eating the wrong thing that should’ve been innocuous. Drunk, half asleep, and making a funny rumbling noise that Shiro could only parse as purring. 

Back on Arus and the way he’d reacted to Shiro teasing him about trying to leave Earth ‘to get away from his own kind’; his face falling and dodging out of it as something to talk about later.

“…Wait. You’re not saying-”

Shiro had the clues, the lion was only drawing attention to them.

“How does that even work - but that’d mean there were Galra around Earth before - what?”

Black was almost making a challenge of it, prodding him over if it was a problem and waiting for him to settle on a reaction.

Honestly, he wasn’t really sure how to feel, besides worried about Keith; there was a lot of alarm tangled up in it, but it was more the implications about Galra presence around Earth, and that they might take an interest in Keith if they ever found out or try to use it against him. 

The lion settled, purring again, apparently satisfied with his response. It was also being held up as proof that his idea of himself wasn’t accurate in terms of what he trusted of his own impressions, and that he knew damn well he was a mess that could get overtaken by it since he’d been the one to guess that ‘Angry shouting’ had mashed buttons from the Arena and skewed his perceptions rather than ‘Angry GALRA shouting’. 

He wasn’t going to be allowed to pretend he was useless, nor would the lion let him try to pretend his problems didn’t exist.

Shiro stared at the console for a long minute. “Were you like this with your previous paladin?” 

If the lion had been able to laugh, it would have, the impression of something soundless, hysterical, and slightly bitter filling his head before it gave a strange, jumbled agreement that wasn’t entirely an agreement and had something else it wasn’t sharing.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Skin by Sixx AM, which I've kinda mentally attached to Shiro.


End file.
